Valve’s Steam Deck now has more than 7,100 games that have been verified or are considered playable. Per SteamDB (via Tech4Gamers) the portable gaming console has hit a new milestone and the number of games on the list continues to grow. As of the writing of this article, the grand total now sits at 7,128 with 4,419 that are considered playable and 2,709 that have been verified.
One of the things that makes these numbers so impressive is that the Steam Deck is still less than a year old as it launched on February 25, 2022. Gabe Newell even assisted in delivering a handful of the first batch to a few lucky people. Like so many other tech devices launched in recent years, the Steam Deck experienced its own challenges with immediate availability due to supply chain issues but it did not take too long for Valve to overcome those challenges. By June it was announced the shipments would double.
Steam Deck First Year Highlights
- February 25 – The release date and the first batch of reviews are call it an overwhelming success for Valve and gamers
- February 28 – Valve releases promo video of Gabe Newell hand delivering some of the first batches to customers
- June 27 – Valve announces that it will begin doubling the number of shipped units every week
- June 29 – Valve confirms that some Steam Decks (256 GB and 512 GB models) may ship with a PCIe Gen3 drive vs the previously advertised PCIe Gen4 drives and claims they will not impact performance.
- August – The FPS Review publishes its own review by John Tharp.
- September – Another milestone is passed as the number of shipped units once again surpasses estimates and Valve says orders placed by September 19 will arrive between then and December.
- October – Following multiple third-party launches Valve announces its own Steam Deck Dock that features 3x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a USB-C port for power, DisplayPort, HDMI, and a Gigabit Ethernet port and begins taking preorders for $89.00.
- December 15 – Steam Deck designers reveal in an interview that they are focusing on adding more features and improvements to the portable gaming console rather than rushing out a new variant with minimally improved hardware.
- December 31 – The Steam Deck now has more than 7,100 games that are verified or playable.
The ecosystem grows
New developments for the gaming console would occur almost monthly as Valve’s engineers and designers responded to input from customers and developers and added new features or refined existing ones. During this time competitors began announcing their next-gen versions featuring a newer AMD APU but Steam Deck designers state they are not focused on using the same since the next processor only offers a minimal improvement but they are interested in working with other companies to utilize the Steam Deck’s OS.
Further strengthening its open-source approach, third-party companies begin shipping a variety of accessories for the Steam Deck ranging from docks, storage drives, memory cards, fan upgrades, back covers, and more. All of this helps to quickly fill the Steam Deck ecosystem with many options for owners to customize their system.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →My brother has come across verified games that still don't work very well.
I kind of like the idea of a steam deck, and maybe if I had a daily commute or something, but low rez 30-60 fps gaming on a handheld is not something I see much fun in when having multiple gaming machines at my disposal that are much more powerfull and run most if not all games better.
Just seen a video of Metaljesusrocks testing a competitor for the deck and it seems more powerfull, it was also somewhat less userfriendly in the hands and on the heavier side, on the other hand it did run windows ( think it used a aMD 6700 ish CPU)
It really depends on the game
Something like Cyberpunk - meh. Half of that game is the graphics. Yeah, Steam Deck will play it, but won't do it justice.
You take something like a JRPG (in my case Bravely Default), or Vampire Survivor, and the Steam Deck is ... absolutely awesome. I love playing with it while being forced to watch dumb TV with the wife.
Verified doesn't mean works flawlessly though - Steam Deck is a study in compromises - you have a tiny screen, a tiny battery, a woefully underpowered SoC, fitting in a cramped and tiny form factor, running everything in "not emulation" on Linux. And somehow, most of the time, it works pretty well. Not perfect, but impressively so nonetheless, and especially for the price they are asking.
It's a fun item, I'm glad I got one with the money I was saving for a PS5. Having an unlocked full Desktop mode alone is a neat and novel concept on a handheld.
Yeah, love my Steam Deck - I thought I would mostly use it for work (ie: companion for night shift) but I find I'm logging onto it at home frequently.
The types of games I mainly play on it are games that are suitable for a small screen, ie: retro-inspired titles, 2D titles, JRPGs, turn based strategy games, etc. I tried to play Horizon Zero Dawn on it - and it plays it smoothly enough, but at 30fps, which doesn't feel good to me. It plays Tales of Arise easily enough at 40fps, which feels alot more playable. Still I view this as primarily a handheld system, and keep my 'heavier' titles for my desktop PC.
I haven't ran into too many games from my library that didn't run on Steam Deck, the games that weren't playing 'out of the box' usually ran well enough with an experimental branch of Proton. I haven't played around much with emulators, but I have accessed my Epic and GOG libraries through the Hero Launcher (nowhere near as smooth a process as native Steam titles, but easy enough to get running.)
But my favourite feature of the Steam Deck is the 'suspend/resume' feature. It's been a common feature with consoles for a couple of generations now and is something I always wanted for PC, but never had it until the Deck. I love that feature so much, that if Valve ever makes Steam OS 3 officially available for DIY PC builders, I'd build a dedicated gaming rig solely for Steam OS and that feature. I'd then have my primary PC either a lightweight laptop or a tiny ITX build focused solely on non-gaming tasks.
I have to agree with that. And I agree about running SteamOS on my computer... I'm >--< this close to doing it now, and if I had thought of it, I would have thrown another SSD in my rig and installed it there to dual boot and play with over this Holiday season when I was wasting time slaying vampires. I'm sick of Win10/Win11.
When I first got the Steam Deck, I thought I would be using In-Home Streaming Play to connect back to my PC and play over the LAN -- that's how I was doing it with my Macbook before when I was forced to watch TV. And that method works very well on the Macbook.
But on the Steam Deck, the difference in resolution was just too great. It works, but it looks horrible. Probably because my main PC is running in 4K, and it's trying to downscale it to 720p, and that's just too far to make it anything close to legible.
But.... like Seymore says - there are certain games that just feel like they are custom made for the little hand held. And Suspend is -- awesome. It does lock the suspended game out on other computers (it will use Steam Cloud on supported titles to transfer save game info between your various Steam clients) if you have it suspended, but you can override and realize you won't have any saved progress to carry forward.
I do wish it could do background downloads - right now to update or install a game you have to have the console on - it won't do anything in Suspend without the screen running, even when plugged in, which is unfortunate. A bit more on the power management side would go a long way, I think.
Pretty sure that's something they are working on for this gen. I thought I saw it mentioned in that story I posted a couple of weeks back regarding how Valve has opted to not move forward with the AMD APU that the competitors are using and instead focusing on adding features and improvements for this one.
I sometimes wonder about the whole verified/playable thing as it reminds me of the many updates I've read regarding the PS3 emulators. Yay, we can get to the title screen or maybe certain levels but then fully playable is another matter.